


We, the Common

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alpha Will, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, BDSM, Chastity Device, Hannibal doesn't give a shit about social constructs, M/M, Manipulation, Omega Hannibal, Topping from the Bottom, forced bondings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-21 03:43:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9530126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: Hannibal has several trains of thought regarding Will Graham – launched at different velocity - with alternate destinations in mind, and the longer he knows the man the greater the underground network becomes.He starts to regret the first hasty departure (the set-up) but he can’t bring himself to derail it – he’s curious to see how it will end, where those wheels will take him. Humiliation, friendship, matters of family, self-preservation, deception, knowing, acceptance, they all overtake each other - even the black thunder of sadism - but one carriage is light and airy in its tireless journey, always set to Hannibal’s amusement. Come hunt me, he cajoles, watching Will on the podium.Come find me, if you can.





	1. Chapter 1

1.

 

“You’re an alpha,” Hannibal says, the first time Will steps into the office.

There are numerous reactions to his cavernous space, from Jack Crawford’s theatrical wow to a more blasé approach by richer clientele. Will steps around him – eyes fixed on the art deco windows – and not the splendour of wealth. He gives the nineteenth century chaise a wide berth. He doesn’t go anywhere near the leather armchairs.

Will pauses beside the ladder leading to Hannibal’s collection of books, client records, and says tightly: “Is that on file?”

“No.”

“Not many people guess.”

Hannibal’s head-tilt is the approximation of a human shrug. “Clinical observation is what I do.”

Will jerks away. He focuses over Hannibal’s left shoulder. “Quite the library you have, Doctor, have you read them all?”

“It would be an affectation if I hadn’t.”   They seem to regard one another, until Hannibal’s mouth tips upward. “This isn’t a formal session, Will. I would have you find the space, the relative distance, to be relaxed with me.”

Will, automatically, takes the high ground.

Not so much a mongoose but a squirrel, Hannibal sighs, and Will’s manners haven’t improved. Abandoned on the lower floor, Hannibal tilts his head upward to keep track of him. The floorboards are noiseless under the distributed weight of Will’s feet; the ladder doesn’t emit a single squeak. Hannibal could be alone in the room right now except for the crackle of the spine as a book is removed from the shelf, as Will leafs through the pages. He’s slight for an alpha, more readily confused for a beta; but most unusual for his gender he shies away from eye contact.

At last Hannibal offers. “I wouldn’t know it to look at you but in truth that is an  _appalling_  aftershave - pheromone blockers acting as a cologne - rosuvitim and a hint of the compound JV-1, too, if I’m not mistaken.” He recognised the base elements of the blocker beneath the more traditional notes of the Eau de Parfum. It’s a faux pas to raise gender issues but Hannibal likes to flaunt the rules.

On occasion, he prefers to thumb his nose at them.  

“Did you bathe in it?” Will’s chosen to walk through life with addled senses, to him everybody appears as a beta. Hannibal can’t discern if the above silence is insulted. Mock innocent, he adds: “I do have a keen sense of smell.”

Will appears over the banister, he blinks once, myopically. “I’m not fond of losing control.”

“We could start there.”

“We could really not.”

Hannibal shifts his weight, face guileless.

He practiced the expression in a mirror at his Uncle’s residence when he was young: along with concern, worry, and compassion. Humour, at least, he never had to feign. Nine bullets, fired in the contained space of a family kitchen. A hop, a skip, a jump, and Will and Hobbs would have been nose to nose with one another; it was hardly a distant target.

Yet nine bullets. That’s some questionable control, right there, Hannibal muses.

Or was Will really so panicked, so stricken, at the scene?

In any case it’s obvious he’s not ready to discuss the Hobb’s family, Abigail, or the series of events that led to his blood-splattered countenance that afternoon. The vague withdrawal Hannibal witnessed when he stood by the ambulance looms near - that moment where Will appeared spent,  _elsewhere -_ and Hannibal couldn’t pry into his thoughts, wasn’t privy to his emotions.

Autistic spectrum, Jack had hinted at. Technically there are enough physical quirks, tics, to support the notion. Hannibal puts his tongue to the point of his sharp teeth and wonders. The first goal of therapy is to establish ease and Will clearly isn’t easy or at ease. Hannibal skirts the issue he’d prefer to talk about and settles on a universal one instead.

“Society places the onus of responsibility on omega’s, very rarely alpha’s. If they forget their suppressant, if their heat is disrupted, if they are caught out unawares, then they are held at fault. Not the alpha in rut. In truth, both genders have biological reactions, and both genders should be accountable for it. Yet only omega’s are publically shamed.”

A car passes by on the street. Twin beams of light illuminate the office décor as it swings into the neighbour’s driveway. On the wall, the bronze statue of the woodland stag flickers and becomes life-sized.

“Did you witness an attack, Will, perhaps when you were young? Is that why you are so diligent in the use of blockers?”

“This is what you want to lead with?” Will looks unimpressed.

“Or we could discuss another topic, one of your choosing? This is your time, Will, to spend however benefits you.” Teasingly Hannibal urges, “I could give you the name of a new supplier? That ‘cologne’ smells rancid, something with a ship on the bottle.”

Will snorts. He eases away from the banister, out of Hannibal’s immediate line of sight. He’s curls are a mess – he’s a head full of question marks.

“I’m not adverse to swimming in neutrality. Thanks for the offer but no, the so-called ‘ship’ is a stronger nullifier than most. It’s a good thing, using blockers,” Will summarises, his voice disembodied as he replaces the book on the shelf. “I prefer _not_ to act like an animal.”

“Ah,” Hannibal allows. The clothes Hannibal wore at Jack’s office, the tans, the neutral beiges are discarded. He stands in a bespoke three-piece suit, colours discordant, resplendent as a peacock. “Aren’t we all?”

 

 

***

 

He kills Cassie Boyle. He takes delight in murdering Marissa Shur. The first is a matter of convenience, poor timing on the omegas behalf. The second is a young alpha, arrogant in her demeanour, foul in her language. Marissa calls her omega mother a ‘bitch’ in polite company and…well, that can’t stand. The girls are sixteen and seventeen years old respectively, teenager’s who are willowy, half of Hannibal’s size.

He carves Cassie’s lungs out as her heart stutters, slows and slows into a pitter-patter. The tears in the corner of her eyes run dark with mascara. Her mouth is a perfect ‘o’ of agony. They are small things, these children, not remotely a challenge to his bulk.

Hannibal tosses Cassie’s weight over the stag’s head like flipping meat on a barbeque. He’s killed younger. Notions of age or maturity don’t weigh on him. Hannibal’s never abided rudeness – regardless of the packaging.

Hannibal plants evidence at farm Graham by the very next case – an overture of friendship, (what amounted to breakfast in ‘bed’) met with the cool indifference of  _I don’t find you that interesting_  and Hannibal had taken Will’s rudeness in stride, replied with a solemn vow.  _You will._

Humiliation – to frame the man sent to hunt him – is the first giddy thought to leave the station. He wants to play in the new sandbox of FBI procedure, to discover their methods of elimination and profiling, Hannibal doesn’t want to murder Agent Crawford, nor Will for that matter, not when they provide such insight. Humiliating them both - setting Will up for the very murders Hannibal has committed, taking away Jack’s greatest asset - is just as rewarding as waving Miriam’s pale arm in the air.

But something changes between the first meeting and the next – play/humiliate – receding to intrigue. Hannibal listens to Will’s lecture on the Copy-cat Killer and feels recognition run down his spine.

Hannibal has several trains of thought regarding Will Graham – launched at different velocites - with alternate destinations in mind, and the longer he knows the man the greater the underground network becomes.

He starts to regret the first hasty departure (the set-up) but he can’t bring himself to derail it – he’s curious to see how it will end, where those wheels will take him. Humiliation, friendship, matters of family, self-preservation, deception, knowing,  _acceptance,_  they all overtake each other, even the black thunder of sadism, but one carriage is light and airy in its tireless journey, always set to Hannibal’s amusement. Come hunt me, he cajoles, watching Will on the podium.  

Catch me if you can.

 

***

 

 

Ironically Will doesn’t realise Hannibal’s sexual designation until he murders Tobias Budge with his bare hands.

It simply hadn’t come up. In workplace relations if gender  _truly_  doesn’t matter then there’s no call to ask. It’s a non-issue for Will. Always has been.  _Yeah, Beverly had snorted. That just makes you sound like a prude…or asexual._

After Hannibal gave his statement, the bodies taken, Will found himself hovering, sitting too near. He couldn’t bring himself to leave.

He can barely allow such space between them. It’s guilt, because he  _let Tobias get away_ , and it’s relief, because he can recall the blood on Hannibal’s nose when they first entered, how his shoulders were hunched, as if Tobias’ blows were still impacting.

The impenetrable armour of suit, vest, tie, was dishevelled.

They’d been in en route when the call came through and Will had heard the words ‘violent alteration’ - ‘two deceased’ –‘233 Milligan Street’ - and felt something malignant claw over him.

Crawford’s hand had already slapped against the radio, asking for the identity of any survivors. The crackle of static, of unheard conversation in the background, filled the cabin of their car.

His palm was cabled by wire, swollen twice its natural size, and Will could hear the soft whoosh of blood in, blood out.  “Jack - ?” he had said, unsteadily.

“There’s a Dr. Lecter, here,” came the eventual reply, crackling over the radio.

The relief had been a flash flood. Perilous and inexplicable. It hadn’t occurred to him Hannibal could have been worried, or Tobias might have misled. Will dug the back of his skull into the car’s headrest, closed his eyes, and breathed out. “Good. That’s good.”

“Why’d he go to Hannibal’s?” Jack asked, tersely. He’d slowed the pace of the car to legal speeds, turned the lights off because there was no rush now, things could wait until they arrived on scene. There was no need to hurry.   “Why not run? He knew we were onto him.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he knew who the snitch was.”

“This patient of Hannibal’s was an omega, yeah?” Jack had met him briefly, portly fellow with soft edges. Tobias was an alpha. Jack had caught the scent of him inside the basement, behind the harsh taint of chemicals and human guts, uneasily, he asks. “Is that who Tobias was serenading?”

“Maybe.”

 

 

 

 

 

In some ways, the reciprocity of friendship hadn’t landed yet.

Hannibal’s attention, the amount of time he awarded Will wasn’t common - that he might have wanted reassurance too, proof of life – never occurred to Will, and so he stays close in the aftermath, soaking up Hannibal’s presence, letting himself be seen in turn. Astounded really – for Hannibal’s expression had gone from horrifically blank to animated when he entered the room – and Will can’t help basking in it. Will’s malnourished, famished for a connection that’s not about the ‘use’ of his abilities, his empathy – he knows he’s out of practice - he’s wretchedly sorry he hadn’t called.

Guilt is a derivative of expectation, and he thinks with a measure of unease, he both passed and failed a test. They sit side by side, secluded together. Their conversation is a quiet bubble around the warzone of the room.

Forensics picks over the wreckage. The SLR cameras whine like mosquitoes before the flash sparks. Outside the sky has gone a bruised purple, clouds rolling in as the streetlights flicker on, one by one. There’s a small crowd on the sidewalk, neighbours or passersby who have stopped, curious at the presence of so many press members. He wonders if Hannibal’s select patronage will take a dent – if Freddie’s by-line will claim, tongue-in-cheek, The Civil Way to Resolve a Dispute! – or if the unexpected publicity will bump his numbers.

Hannibal sits reserved in the centre of it – eyes half-lidded, reptilian dark - as people finger his belongings; document his possessions. Will doesn’t touch him.   There’s a borderland of space between them, measured by exact inches, this close and no further. Will feels no need to push at it. Meticulously, Hannibal picks the blood out from under his fingernails.

If he’d been pressed to categorize the other man Will would have argued alpha.

It’s in Hannibal’s carriage, the authority he wears so well. Hannibal exudes power: across his shoulders, chest; through the latissimus dorsi, along his forearms and thighs, it’s in the way he commands a room. The chaos, the shattered furniture of the office, whisper ‘two alpha’s clashed here’ and Will doesn’t need to examine the evidence or let the pendulum swing. He can take the other man at his word – he can see the evidence of it in Tobias’ concave skull.

“Jack insists I go to hospital. It’s unnecessary of course. I can treat the wound more comfortably at home.”

“Yeah, Jack’s covering his ass with the FBI. Technically you’re on retainer with them, you go down with a secondary infection they want to wave the paperwork around and say they provided all ‘duty of care’.”

“An infection,” Hannibal repeats. He sounds affronted.

“It’s not a reflection on your competence as a doctor. It’s a sign of budget cuts. They don’t want to fork out for future legal action if you decide to sue.”

“The incident didn’t occur on their time,” Hannibal argues. “And I am not interested in money.”

Said with the confidence of someone who’s never had to work for a dime. “Then maybe it will help Jack rest easier at night. You’re friends, aren’t you?” There’s torque in the question, something twists inside Will’s stomach. He’s not looking at Hannibal’s eyes but the blood smeared across his upper lip and he thinks, wonderingly, aren’t we?

Hannibal’s expression warms. “One of a limited few.”

“Then go to hospital, be ‘officially’ treated and documented. I’ll drive you there and back if you prefer.”

Hannibal did prefer.

Cuffs straightened, jacket adorned, he strides from the room with an erect posture, as if he’d prefer to walk on knives than give Tobias the satisfaction of weakness, as if he’d deny him the pleasure even in the afterlife.

Will eyes him critically. He knows in a second-hand way Hannibal is attractive, cheekbones to cut your palm on and a mobile mouth, but Will perceives it in a celluloid fashion, like an actor on film he’s not to be touched.   It’s not just the physicality either. Hannibal exudes power of a different sort. There’s a certainty of his right to exist - however he may - that’s calming. When Will feels like he’s unravelling at the seams he can envy the other man’s poise. Hannibal’s sense of ‘self’ is sharp as the katana residing inside his home, and the resultant lack of inner turmoil he emits is soothing.

Being with Hannibal is like standing inside a church – blessedly quiet – and with so few distractions Will can feel himself emerge, those loud and foreign emotions receding like the tide, until the muddy outline of his own shape takes form.

Ironically, Hannibal is the most peaceful person Will knows _._

“They give you something for the leg?”

“A local anaesthetic. It will do for a number of hours.”

Will’s never fit the cliché of his own gender – people stutter in surprise when they read ‘alpha,’ or they squint with suspicion - but Hannibal is the very conceit of it. So it’s something of a shock then, when he reads omega on Hannibal’s medical chart. It’s in bold type followed by: Age. Height. Weight. Country of birth. Place of Residence, and beneath that in smaller type, as if to preserve some modicum of privacy Bond Status.

When Will tears his gaze away, staring and caught out, Hannibal has the audacity to wink.

Is  _this_  who Tobias was serenading? Jack asks inside his head.

 

 

***

 

 

“You’ve never - ?”

“Much like yourself. I’ve had sex, of course, most often with beta’s but the intimacy of a bond is not for me.”

“Issues with freedom?” He drove Hannibal to the hospital in his crappy old car with the busted heating. He returns Hannibal to his home with dog hair lining the seats, a stick shift that brushes against Hannibal’s thigh every time Will changes gear, and a glove box overfilled with canine treats.

“None at all. I prize my freedom highly. The pressure to marry, to have two point five children and a picket fence is a modern day conceit, a direct result of the Second World War. Prior to that, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, being alone was not a cause for pity. Spinsters, gentlemen of old, were not derogative terms. It was their choice, and one that would be respected. The decimation of the population post World War changed the spectrum – emphasis was placed on romance,  _breeding_  – and the old bonds of friendship, familial love, were paled into non-existence.”

Hannibal rubs his leg once, both palms on the inner and outer meat of his thigh, careful of the wound.

“I enjoy my independence, and in my experience as a psychiatrist, alpha’s so rarely ask permission before they bite. Where is the freedom of true choice – of selection - if you are clouded with pheromones? A bond is not companionship, Will, not as I would have it. At worst, it’s a form of bigoted slavery.”

As Red Graham used to say, that shit sticks, and being coded to one person for the rest of your life might play well in romantic films but in reality, it led to a whole lot of grief.

Will has the statistics, the portfolios of suck-marks, case studies of victim/murderer profiles, the SOCA (sexual offences & child abuse) data – he knows there are positives too, people who sail through life together, deeply in love both inside of heat and out of it – but others get shackled together, overcome by heat or rut, and outside of the heat cycle find there’s not much to like. That they are, in fact, only likable three times a year. Will’s chosen career has sunk him into the thick of it, of bodies and rape and plea defences containing ‘stupid omega shouldn’t have come out smelling like that. What was I meant to do? Bitch was asking for it.’  

Better or for worse, Will lost respect for the holy sanctimony of a bond years ago.

He imagines Hannibal’s experiences in psychiatry might not be much better.

He turns the wheel to the left, downsizes to third then second gear, and brings the car to a shuddering halt in the driveway. Rain drizzles across the windscreen, the first splatters carried by the high wind. The engine ticks randomly as it cools.

“You and I are both enshrouded by solitude. The high walls of my memory palace serve me well. It doesn’t matter if I’m inside a crowded room or dwell in the beating heart of the city; I am at my core free, untethered. I imagine the wild woods; the empty spaces of nature serve you, too. By choice we are each alone.”

“Isolation as ultimate freedom?”

“As a young man I always thought so. Perhaps my disdain closed off other avenues for me.” Hannibal hums contemplatively. “Broaden your horizons - ”

“Lest we be crushed?”

He thinks about Tobias’ body, the pulpy mess of his throat where Hannibal had jabbed him with a fist. He thinks about modern society, where the flavour of the day says alphas are on top of the food chain and everyone else is situated below. He thinks about the drawings in Hannibal’s office, sketches of ancient gods, ruling kings, of fearful shield-brothers, battle tested in combat. Ruefully, Will admits. “I didn’t peg you as an omega.”

In the dark, Hannibal’s teeth flash. “Does it alter things between us?”

“No.”

This is the first genuine friendship Will has ever had.

Even if Hannibal weren’t on suppressants Will couldn’t have smelled him through the blockers. Romance novels tend to flout light and citrusy scents for omega’s and he wonders if that’s what Tobias had fixated on, if that’s what Hannibal smells like now, that faint aroma on his skin that would grow to be overwhelming during heat. Will can only rely on sight, and all he sees is the blood of flowering bruises on Hannibal’s cheek.

Hannibal looks amused, devastatingly so. He looks filled to the brim with take-it-as-you-can  _life._  That stoop-shouldered man Will glimpsed behind Jack’s shoulder is nowhere in sight.

“You honestly didn’t know? A predisposition toward the  _healing_  disciplines – medicine at first, followed by psychiatry – patronage of the opera, a love for the culinary arts and music that can move me to tears. A holding pattern that’s preoccupied with matters of ‘family’ – “ he doesn’t say Abigail, but she’s there, Will’s seen Hannibal’s fast devotion to her. Drily, Hannibal adds - “you might be the only person in Baltimore who failed to notice my plumage.”

Will bites his lip. He turns his face away, smile gone secretive and small. “Good night, Doctor Lecter.”

“Will,” Hannibal returns, gravely.

 

***

 

3.

 

 

The encephalitis is a match taken to dry kindling. His mind’s set aflame until all of Will’s childhood defences, his wooden forts, are razed to the ground.

He dreams of dead men upon his porch, stinking up the air with bloated rot. He chases impossible stags along starry highways, under half-crescent moons. He goes quiet when the Wendigo reveals its form. He hears Abigail in his inner ear (swallows her ear) and pores over his own notes regarding the copycat –

intelligent,  _sadist,_  inside knowledge.

_He’s not an alpha, Jack._

Doubtfully, Jack had shaken his head:  _Will, listen: statistically speaking –_

_It’s a mockery. Don’t you see? He’s running rings around us. He’s laughing on the inside._

He finds Miriam’s notes mixed in with his own, the top right-hand corner scribbled with reminders like  _Milk!_  and  _Don’t forget to pick up Raleigh!_ written with the same disembodied hand that now rests in cold storage. In biro, scrabbled near the bottom of the page is the sentence  _He’s different somehow. Unique._

He knows who it is. Will knows when he falls asleep inside the Bentley on the long drive to the Hobb’s residence, Hannibal beside him, the music low and demonic, trusting the other man to take him to the start. He sleeps because he’s calm. Will’s already decided what he’s going to do, the solid weight of the handgun digs into his hip, and there’s no room for betrayed hurt. When wound up to breaking point; this is the way Will Graham goes.  Like most of his plans regarding Hannibal Lecter, it doesn't quite work out the way he wanted.

 

 

 

***

 

Will’s shot, exiled to prison.

Hannibal walks free.

The ‘ship in the bottle,’ along with any other pharmaceuticals that might inhibit the prescribed medication is permanently denied him. Will’s sense of smell reasserts itself just as he loses his appetite; the food-tray shunted aside, eyes fixed on the grey concrete in front of his cell. He counts the footfalls as they approach, steady as a metronome. As it turns out Hannibal doesn’t smell of posies or lemons or any other would-be compost.

He smells like a blizzard, of permafrost and ice.

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal drawls, and his smile is a shard. He looks positively delighted.

He colludes with Jack, he stages a trap, he makes an offering of his mind. It’s not difficult. There’s a part of Will that intrinsically understands what Hannibal wants – a partner, equality, someone to share with – he values his freedom too highly to leash it, to ever want to bond, but he is lonely.  

It’s the oddest, most sexually charged relationship Will’s ever had. He wants to kill Hannibal, hurt him, he wants to take that poisonous bundle of betrayal and ram it down his throat because in some ways what wounded most wasn’t the murders, the prison time, but the realisation their friendship - the first friendship Will had  _expectations_  of - was founded on lies.  There’s nothing _, nothing,_ peaceful about Hannibal Lecter _._  It was a joke to think so. Will boxes up the memory of it, he buries it deep underground, he buries the grave under a metric tonne of dirt.

Will is going to catch the Chesapeake Ripper. Jack will throw away the key.

At it’s most simple; it’s an act of reciprocity.

Like most things involving Hannibal Lecter, it doesn’t go to plan.

 

 

***

 

 

He can remember the teeth. How the linoleum blade in his hand jerked upward, turned his design into a demented smile. Hannibal can recall the moment Will hit the floor, belly torn open and blood running down his chin, teeth stained red from where he had clamped his jaw shut around Hannibal’s throat and  _bit_. Savagely as a wolf.

Shakily, Hannibal staggers away.

Didn’t I? Will taunts, gasping in agony.  _Didn’t I?_

His eyes are huge. Hair plastered into ringlets by the outside rain.

He stood so still for the slaughter and Hannibal couldn’t resist drawing him close; holding him tight, just this once - blade hidden, bodies aligned - pressed against one another from chest to thigh. It was an indulgence, Hannibal knew; it was a glimpse through the veil into some other world where Will _came_ with him, and in that world this is how it felt, this is how they leant, this is how they moved together.

He would know it: if only for a second.

Realities co-exist: one where Mischa is still alive and Hannibal lies buried in the snow; one where the siblings grew into adulthood together; one where Will forsook Jack and the FBI. One where Jack came to Hannibal’s house with an armada of special forces, where the bullets flew hot and heavy. One where he is not a murderer, still a surgeon, is married; in Europe, one where the Lecter lineage lived on: one where he is an alpha, beta; one where gender doesn’t matter.

Hannibal believes in alternate realities so when the knife turns in his hand, when he sinks it deep into the pit of Will’s belly - across muscle and abdomen - there is no cause for doubt or second guessing.

Somewhere else; see, things turns out differently.

Hannibal doesn’t need to curb his reactions because in another realm, the opposite event co-exists. There is no cause for lamentation when every eventuality happens. And thus, it’s freedom to act how he wants here. Perfect, ultimate, freedom. So he breathed Will in, held him close, and re-enacted his own deep wound. He cut Will in half - as Hannibal himself had been cut - and bathed them both in viscera.

Will spasmed. His hips and thighs rolled upward, his torso jerked away. It would have allowed space if Hannibal’s arm hadn’t banded around his spine, preventing the escape. Will wasn’t overt in his agony, he never screamed, the quiet exhalation against Hannibal’s cheek was soft, intimate as sex. Will turned his face into the crook of Hannibal’s neck, shuddered at mid-cut (when Hannibal contemplated cutting his organs out) then bit fiercely, until Hannibal’s blood flowed into his mouth and they both staggered apart.

You didn’t want it, Hannibal had accused. Didn’t I? Will taunts.

Dazed, Hannibal touches the wound, over carotid and scent glands and muses wonderingly: Want or self-preservation?

His clever, clever boy.

The knife turns over in his grip.

Hannibal’s allowed a bond to semi-form before, to really feel the beginnings of it, then cut the alpha open from pubic bone to collar. He had wanted to be as intimate with her demise as possible. He had wanted to peer down the link as Alicia gurgled down the drain-hole and into the afterlife. It was bewitching. The stark terror; how he could feel the edges of her fear beating at his mind like a sparrows wings. The bond resonated so strongly, even at half strength.

Her anguish, horror, gave birth to a number of compositions. It inspired Hannibal to repurpose the emotion onto both harpsichord and piano, to create art out of it. He could have lain on that bed for a lifetime, but the body cooled, the blood congealed, and the veneer of emotion she had given him withered.

Hannibal recalls, in a distant manner, Alicia too hadn’t asked permission.

The knife twists in his hand.  There are tears in Hannibal’s eyes. He feels cracked open. He’s leaking emotions he can’t parse. He could finish it; like he finished her, or he could let it play out.

Will grimaces. His legs kick spasmodically, trying to gain purchase on the floor. He’s holding his entrails in with one hand, propped up by the kitchen cabinet. There’s defiance in his eyes, most notably, he allows no fear to show. Hannibal thinks, disbelievingly: how rude. He thinks, discordantly, I wouldn’t have you any other way.

Will’s hand is clamped around his stomach. His face and jaw have gone long, as if he’s holding inside a scream. “It doesn’t matter, you killed your first alpha, yeah?”

“She wasn’t mine. And I certainly wasn’t hers.” Hannibal tilts his head, studying him. “Is this a ploy, to finish you up quickly, in case I start to feel the pain too?”

“You can’t have your sadism and enjoy it.”

There’s a barbed hook, a fishing line of gossamer weight, growing in length and volume. It’s a pity your sister died so young - Robert Lecter might have said - and Hannibal jerks his head uneasily at the feeling of it.

His finger’s itch, patterned with blood and steel.

Omega male’s were sterile, a genetic throwback, a so-called mistake. His entire family line ended with Mischa in the snow. Family wasn’t an option, not for Hannibal, it was something he never even considered, until he met Will Graham. A door, bolted shut, rusty with disuse had cracked open in his mind and Hannibal had wondered: what if I choose my own?

He wants to hurt Will. He wants to share every terrible moment of what he’s feeling.

Abigail gasps in the background, too loud, close to hyperventilating. Her feet shuffle against the floor.

“Did you think you could change me?”

See how foolish you are, to believe so? He wants Will to  _hear_  the derision in his voice. The bite on his neck throbs with each pulse of his heart. Do you believe you’re superior to me? That you can dominate as an alpha? That I will lay my knife aside, now that my blood runs free? He has drawings of Patroclus and Archilles in his office, renderings of Alexander and Hephaestion. Hannibal places no stock in modern theory – he believes in the shield-brothers of yore.

There’s no fear in Will’s eyes and oh, Hannibal wants to alter his expression. He needs to see it _quake._ This building rage, the grief for all plans lost, is eating Hannibal alive.

Will’s a perfect reflection. Hannibal can hear his  _own_  derision echoed in Will’s reply, see it plainly in his body language. Not quite a smile and not quite a smirk; there’s a curious up-tic to Will’s lips, to his bared and bloody teeth. “I- I already did.”

Hannibal jolts, the connection between them flares. “Ah,” he exhales.

He turns his head like a predator. His neck is wet with blood. Hannibal struggles to keep his expression clean, to stop his nose from scrunching up into a minuscule snarl, to keep his teeth hidden. Will’s mark on his throat feels like mockery; every dream Hannibal nurtured given to treachery. He turns the knife over again, clever between his fingers.  “Abigail,” Hannibal orders. “Come here.”

Hannibal’s not afraid of death; Will’s never even blinked at it, but Abigail still has nightmares over a different kitchen, a longer knife, and the terror in her eyes is palpable. She stalls, feet dragging. She looks at Will wildly.

Hannibal steers her over the blood, over Will’s long legs, and places her against his body, back to chest.

“Oh,” Will says, imploringly. His expression finally,  _finally_  shifts. “Oh, Hannibal. Don’t. Please don’t.”

It doesn’t feel like triumph.

It’s akin to a cold and desolate plain, of permafrosts and wintry gusts. Hannibal lets it roll through him, over him, and out. He commits Will’s pinched face - his slow slip into horror – to his memory palace, a gift to take away with him.

Will tries to rise from the floor. He gains an inch then slumps, stomach ruined, core muscles shredded. His voice is a near sob. “Please don’t.”

Hannibal kept Abigail close because it meant keeping  _Will_  close, but for all of his parental lectures, his caring hugs, Hannibal’s adopted daughter is superfluous to his needs. Like Alana and Jack, she’s an unwanted weight. Abigail’s outlived her usefulness in all regards except one. “I forgive you, Will. Can you forgive me?”

"God, don’t.”

Afterward, he takes his coat and steps over Alana’s landed body, walks coolly down the sodden street. There’s rain on his face, salt in his mouth, there’s something dark and heaving in the caverns of his chest. In his haste to leave, bodies were strewn left and right, the floors of his pristine kitchen speckled red with blood. Nothing so gauche as ‘running’ away but he sets his eyes on Europe, a different continent - and feels the gossamer thread pull taut between them.

When you come, will there be police in tow? Will you tell them, the FBI, Kade Purnell, Jack (if he survives, if he’s more than larder in the pantry), what you did in that house?

 

***

 

“I bit him,” Will admits, one sunny morning.

Spring has come, the cold landscape of winter broken as the snows finally melt. He shuffles along in the outside gardens, breath frosting in front of him, face turned toward the sun, and Alana keeps pace.

There’s a pregnant silence. Alana wheels her chair forward, almost smashing his shins in, and cries sharply. “You did  _what?”_

Will shrugs. “I can find him this way. Anywhere in the world.”

“That’s your reasoning?” Alana doesn’t shout - she never shouts - but she looks ready to hurl something with weight behind it, a brick maybe. “You could have found Hannibal half a dozen different ways, Will! Sane _,_   _impersonal_ ways. You don’t bond yourself to a serial killer!” This is stuff that shouldn’t be said! - goes unspoken - she doesn’t understand what he was thinking. Will’s always been dead-set against the idea of a bond and Hannibal only slept with betas. “What happens if you come face to face?”

“It’s unconsummated,” Will answers, stiffly.

He still thinks about running away with Hannibal, he fantasizes about killing Hannibal with his bare hands, yet Abigail’s ghost is opposed to his murder, disdainful of his capture. Abigail is whimsy, an illusion of ‘what-if’, and Will’s caught in the veil between two worlds.

“Of course it’s unconsummated! I didn’t think you had sex with your guts hanging out,” Alana retorts, waspishly. “Does Jack know?”

“No.” Will goes preternaturally still. He’s body turns into a hard line. “Hannibal’s mine to hunt.”

 

 

***

 

She tells Jack straight away.  She doesn't even wait until Will’s left the hospital.

 

 

*** 

 

 

In Florence, the wound on Hannibal’s throat knots into scar tissue and the connection between them chafes. Irritates. He wakes up sometimes with his hand clamped across his stomach, a bright starburst of pain, and thinks how peculiar.

Murder doesn’t calm him; Florence has lost its allure. He became a man in this city and now he is adrift with questions. He reads Tattlecrime; he pores over the pictures of Will, pale and alive, hooked up to hospital machines. He thinks: good. He thinks: I didn’t give you permission. He thinks: Are you going to finish what you started? Fuck, fight, kill me?

Kill  _with_ me?

“Eat him,” Bedelia advises. “It’s the only way to free yourself. If you don’t, this thing will consume you, Hannibal, it will eat you alive.”

He touches Bedelia’s hair, licks into her mouth, and begins feeding her snails, almonds, and goats milk. He’s altering the flavour of her flesh. He prepares each meal lovingly.   Bedelia, when informed by their insipid poet, chokes on the implicit threat. Serene, Hannibal smiles at her over his dinner plate. He sleeps with her the way he slept with Alana, sensuous and slow, and at night Will wanders through halls of his palace, dark eyed, wet with rain, and whispers: You were meant to leave.

Hannibal wakes with his cock hard and leaking. He rolls onto his belly to rub against the sheets. The room dips for a second, unsteady as the ocean, the swell and fall of a wave. He thinks he can smell sea-salt until the scent of it fades, ephemeral, never there to begin with.

The scar stings.

There’s an uncomfortable truth Hannibal has come to realise: Will was remarkably open, vulnerable in his honesty. He hid nothing from Hannibal in their first few months, spoke openly of his fears and emotions, and Hannibal had lapped it up, greedy for more. It was the second year that proved problematic, when Hannibal realised he honestly couldn’t tell when Will was lying, not when Will put his mind to deception. In Florence Hannibal goes through every interaction they ever had, scouring for clues, looking for what he missed. And the truth is: he can’t read Will. The man lies as easily as Hannibal does - a perfect reflection – nothing Will did in the lead-up gave away his game. The FBI operation was compromised by nothing more than Freddie’s dreadful perfume. Did Will mean it, anything of what he said? Did he want the way Hannibal had wanted? Why did he bite? Or was the action another gambit? The fastest GPS known to man?

He’s coming, Hannibal  _knows_  Will’s coming, and he feels his balls tighten at the thought, his cock rigid and hard. Alphas were over-privileged as a sex – they thought they were  _owed_  – but Will’s never acted with a sense of entitlement. For revenge maybe, retribution for his own sense of betrayal, yes, but not sex. The question circles again, pushing into Hannibal’s thoughts as he pushes his hips into the mattress.  Friction crawls up his spine, his ass aches, why did you bite me?

It takes Will Graham three months to recover after being gutted. In the catacombs of Florence, a continent away, it takes him less than a day to find Hannibal. I forgive you, he confesses, and then he leaves Hannibal to dwell on it, while he follow footsteps into the past. A mere week later they meet again at the museum. Will’s smile is chagrined, weary, as he drops into the seat beside Hannibal with a low groan of pain. Kill him, Bedelia had urged. But there are things and places Hannibal wants to share with Will. Cultures, activities, he wants to partake and delight in. He wants to show Will the world, if he’ll allow it. Hannibal stares, enraptured, as Will spills forth words, saying aloud everything Hannibal has desired to hear, and he can’t, _can’t,_ get a read on what’s going on below the surface. But his word choice, imagery, Will’ flourish is perfect.

Will lets a silver knife drop into the palm of his hand, after confessing to gladness at seeing Hannibal - his perfect, perfect liar - and Hannibal has his answer in the sharp flick of a blade. The feeling is not unlike Baltimore. Behind that there's the incredulous thought _I almost_   _fell for it again_. The camaraderie of the museum, the brief flare of happiness, gives way to hot betrayal.  Hannibal’s not prone to cursing _, but he’s going to eat the other man alive._ He’s going to scoop Will’s brains out from the pan of his skull. Jack’s here, Jack’s won. The invisible war they waged for Will’s loyalty has come to its natural conclusion, and so Jack can  _have_  Will, with lemon and infused thyme.

It’s more than petulance, it’s a bone saw to the frontal lobe, Hannibal has every intention of carrying it through.

As with most of his outlines regarding Will Graham, it doesn’t quite go to sketch.

 

***

 

 

“Sometimes I think you didn’t mature pass the age of ten.  Other times I’m certain you’re not human at all.”

He has his drawings in front of him, shading the depths in with a blunt piece of charcoal. “You think I’m stunted?”

“I think you grew up in a castle. You were the only one who resided in it; King, Lord and master all; other people’s sensibilities, their fears, needs, wants didn’t matter.”

“No consideration for the peasants? It’s highly inaccurate, Alana, I would not have fooled you, Will, or built my practice to such notoriety without a base understanding of humanity.”

“Just no love for it.”

“I love a good laugh the same as the next person. Chilton was an endless source of entertainment to me, I dare say, Jack Crawford was too.”

“Why did you give yourself up?” Alana asks, wearily.

“Where is Will?” Is Hannibal’s standard reply.

In the BSCH Hannibal asks permission once every three months, for three years running. In the centre of his cell, hands clasped behind his back, in front of orderlies and the chief of staff, he formally requests the presence of his alpha. Alana has denied him the use of suppressants, an indignity he notes - marked in a private tally - and so he suffers through the humiliation of heats for the first time in decades.

The request is written in triplicate, sent off to the FBI first who police his mail, and then eventually onward to Will, wherever he has settled in the U.S. Hannibal doesn’t know his location; Hannibal is no longer privy to any aspect of his life.

“Why keep trying?” There are sharp edges to Alana; where once she would have spoken gently her voice is now flat. Her lipstick is 1930’s red. He remembers the promise he made to her, he imagines spreading her ribcage open, bones spread like a spider’s legs. It’s Alana who wears the bespoke suits now, cut low in pinstripes and daring colours. Ironic, that she’s chosen Hannibal’s armour for her own. “Your claim is not legitimate. You’re unconsummated.”

“It scarred,” Hannibal argues. “Regardless of consummation the mark hasn’t disappeared.”

“That’s pre-modern law,” she refutes, sharply.  Alana's eyes flick to his jumpsuit, where the material doesn’t cover the skin. “Using neo-classical theory won’t help your case. Will said there was a formal rejection.”

_I don’t want to see you, or think about you, I don’t want you in my life any more._

Each sentence a stab wound, each choice of word damning.

Will bit him then let Hannibal go. Hannibal thought he knew all forms of cruelty, but he never imagined Will. He can feel him, on occasion, when Will slips and lets his mental forts drop, a bright slash of emotion that can rivet Hannibal to his bunk. “He was the one who initiated the bond. He shouldn’t have if he were unwilling to fulfil all obligations to it.”

“He said it in court, it was a means of catching you and nothing more.”

“Yes. He did say so.” Hannibal puts the charcoal down and turns his drawing perpendicular to the table. “I believe you could argue Will acted above and beyond the call of duty, and in doing so, made the jury highly uncomfortable. Did it make you uncomfortable, Alana? Knowing he’d use a bond in such a way?”

“No,” she says bluntly. “The end justifies the means.”

Will wielded biology against him like it was a weapon, but Hannibal’s lawyer knew how to play with that stick of dynamite.  The backlash may have inadvertently spared Hannibal the death-sentence, coupled with the insanity plea. He’d seen how the jury had stared at Will - as if to say  _how **could**  you?  **Why**  would you? - _as if Hannibal wasn’t the only freak on trial.

Alana turns her body away, lips pursed.  She says cruelly. “He’s married.”

It’s a jolt, an electric shock. Will  _couldn’t_  have when Hannibal can still feel his ragged tethers. “He is not.” Hannibal could close his eyes and find Will as easily as Will found him in Europe. Whatever they are to one another, it is not obsolete.

“To a beta woman,” Alana elaborates. “He’s raising a son, Hannibal. Do you think he’s going to take time out from his busy schedule to ease your heats? To help you in any shape or form?”

There’s a fine tremor in his limbs, sweat on his hairline, a rising core temperature. His precious memory palace is beyond him during heat – the walls melting, faces disembodied – in a week he’ll be utterly vulnerable and Hannibal despises it. He despises how they’ll drug him with antipsychotics but refrain from using suppressants. He despises how Alana says it’s state practice: Will, too, went through this. He despises every orderly, doctor, patient, who witnesses his debasement. And the indignities pile upon one another, layers thick.  Will is his mate. Will married a beta woman. Will has a son.  

Two of these things do not fit.

“Pass along my formal request, Alana.”

She clucks her tongue, her eyes avarice bright.

DENIED comes back in stark copper letterhead.

“You’ll be placed in a medically induced coma for the duration of your heat. Beta-approved nurses will see to your daily needs; you’ll be separated from other sexual orientations until your pheromone count is at acceptable norms.” Softer, Alana adds: “We’ll wake you up when it’s over, Hannibal. Just think it’ll be like it never happened.”

Sadist, Hannibal thinks of Will, before his mind is stripped from him. He is hollowed out want. Ravenous for his alpha's touch.

Whatever sufferings he inflicted, Will found his reckoning and returned it with interest. His iron control – fought and maintained, perfected after forty-nine years, his tailor-made person suit – is unstitched, prick-by-prick.  Will’s cruelties are so much subtler than Hannibal’s; it’s a wonder no one else can see them, how easily he manipulates.

He wakes up a week later, returned to his cell, muscles weak and dried slick on the inside of his thighs. He can smell other people on his skin. Orderlies perhaps. He doesn’t know who they were, and while he can trust Alana to adhere to the rules of common decency, he doesn’t know what they did. There are gaps in his mind. He sees Will’s murder in such moments, he fantasises about it in rich detail.

As the years pass the walls of his memory palace are not as shining and beautiful as they once were. There are cracks in the ceiling; there are loosened floorboards under foot. Hannibal swallows the medication he is given. He is a model patient while he waits. He composes letters, he writes articles for the Psychiatry Today, and torments the doctors who sit in front of his cell. Patiently, Hannibal waits.

 

***

 

 

 

He comes not to ease Hannibal’s heat sickness but to catch another killer.

He comes wearing that unique cologne – noxious and overbearing – to block out and nullify the scent of an omega. It amused him once – in the early days of their acquaintance – how closely Will’s distaste for rut mirrored Hannibal’s own need for control. If I marry, it’ll be a beta woman, he had confessed once, easy in Hannibal’s presence. It’s the only way to ensure free will. Then later: I’m not interested in power dynamics, Doctor Lecter, it’s not actually my style.

Will had wanted Alana once upon a time; safe and beautiful Alana. Hannibal slept with her for two reasons: to provide an alibi and to malign their already fraught relationship.

When Will steps into the cellblock for the very first time, he reeks of the old cologne. He’s unfailingly polite, and that’s  _never_  been Will: Will who reacted to ‘breakfast in bed’ by bluntly saying ‘I don’t find you that interesting’, who threw his battered satchel on Hannibal’s nine thousand dollar chaise lounge like it was a Frisbee, who entered his home uninvited, in a tizz because he had kissed Alana Bloom. Will, who nurtured a baby serial killer to cut Hannibal’s arm open, from forearm to wrist. Will, who was  _rude_ , who colluded with Jack to capture him.

Will stinks of a beta - strange and unknown to Hannibal – he is  _polite_  and Hannibal wants to tear the cell apart, he wants to find and eat her organs raw. He wants to skin Will, peel the layers away until he uncovers the bloody truth. Hannibal’s eyes latch onto the other man, feasting. He wants to cut her out of Will’s overwritten sensibilities; he wants to scrub her scent off his skin.

It doesn’t take too long until that politeness goes to hell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hannibal loves him, his precious boy, for all of his trickery and sleight of hand, he can almost smell Chilton's cindered flesh.  “Will!” He says, when the case is over. Hannibal takes one step forward, trying to draw the contact out; to keep Will engaged, to keep him a fraction longer. He’s sketching in his mind, eyes flickering from left to right, trying to commit the image to memory. “Was it good to see me?”

Here is a truth: people were animals and few held Hannibal’s interest. Very few could elicit an emotional reaction. Hannibal can count the number on one hand, on three separate fingers; a lonely figure for a life which spanned five decades.

Here is a truth: he killed alphas, betas, and omegas. He has killed across culture, gender, through ages, and has displayed those bodies in a mockery. He consumed their organs, fed them to others unwittingly. Marisa Shur was seventeen; legally still a child, Hannibal has killed people younger than her. He didn’t give a second thought to the eleven year old boy residing in Will’s home.

Here is a truth: he had every intention of murdering Will in Florence, bond or no bond, but by Muskrat farms the hurt and anger had quieted. Burned out by a cindered brand, or by the knowledge there were worse, more deserving people to hunt. Killing each other ended in a bad joke, every single time, and maybe that was fates hand. An intervention he couldn’t ignore. Trying to predict Will, to enforce an outcome to suit Hannibal’s needs, no longer seemed a priority.

He's changing, Hannibal realizes,  _Will is changing him_  and the thought no longer makes him mad.

They talked all the time once - with flowery descriptions, through metaphor, by euphemism - they spoke in a language riddled with inconsistency. Through three years, multiple murder attempts, and a whole slew of lies. When he tucks Will into bed after Mason and the slaughter, Hannibal knows words between them have no traction; they have slipped the yoke of meaning. Here is a truth:  _action and not words_  was the only option left to him.

Hannibal gave away his precious freedom, handed himself over to the authorities as a silent vow of commitment. Your rejection is not accepted, it means. I won’t run – he promises, wordlessly - not until you come to collect me.

Here is a truth: he had sent the Dragon to murder the woman, her proxy child, to mutilate the family Will was hiding behind, to annihilate their influence over him because they don’t belong. They’re not part of Hannibal’s story. He had a plan built on a heathen faith, and faith ignites  _expectation_.

Will can’t abandon him.

“Good?”

Will doesn’t look over his shoulder; his body is tense, lean as a bloodhound. Hannibal’s scar throbs as he waits for the reply.

“No. It wasn’t good.”

 

 

**

 

God is capricious, endlessly cruel, and or all of his clever words in Florence god doesn’t forgive until a bullet shatters the windowpane and Hannibal’s mid-riff.  Will raises his wineglasses slightly, as if in toast, when the Dragon steps through the window and orders, “don’t move.”

Hannibal speaks to the Dragon, surreptitiously, he watches Will.  He has been here before, he can read those micro-expressions, the way Will shifts minutely, reaching for the gun tucked into his waistband.

Will thought he could watch the destruction of something beautiful, unique, and then found the actuality of it to his distaste. Hannibal waded through the same waters when he had Will incarcerated - the dissatisfaction when fantasy doesn’t match reality. Will turns on the Dragon at the very same instant Dolarhyde moves against him.

A knife to the cheek - through flesh and into the mouth - should have put any man to the floor screaming, but Will staggers upward, joins the fight proper and Hannibal has no choice but to follow.

It sings through his blood, that dormant bond, it calls like to like. Conjoined, they kill, they hunt together like animals.

Will comes to him after, like he did in the first year of their friendship, soft, calling for Hannibal’s aid and expecting to receive it. Euphoric, Hannibal helps him to his feet, he let’s Will nestle into his chest with a hitched sigh. Will’s quiet under Hannibal’s chin, head tucked away, his fingers knead at Hannibal’s torn sweater. It’s so easy to mistake Will’s gender, neither one of them conform to cliché. “It’s beautiful,” he admits, brokenly.

Hannibal holds him tight; closes his eyes with the foreknowledge he will rend anyone who comes between them.

The connection is tangible, humming with slow acceptance. Hannibal waits because it’s not about what he wants anymore. It’s no great surprise when the ground tilts, when Will’s hands lock onto his arms like a mechanism.  Untroubled, Hannibal lets himself fall.

 

***

 

 

“I’m not sorry,” Will rasps. “I’m not going to apologise to you.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”  

Hannibal certainly never had.  

“Do you want me to - ?”

“No, thank you. I saw your attempt at medical aid with the Hobbs family. In truth, I’d prefer you remain by the door.”

Will shoots him a look. He cracks open a water bottle, tilts his head side-on, and pours it over his cheek, splashing the blood and salt away. His mouth is pursed shut. Hannibal can’t help him unless he helps himself first.

Their clothes are sodden, heaped on the floor. Will, decked out in stolen hospital scrubs, bends down and stashes their wet belongings into a plastic bag with bio-waste scrawled over the front of it. Hannibal is still naked, there’s a shock blanket draped over his shoulders for warmth but his skin is pebbled, fish-belly white.

“Will you need a doctor?”

“If I succumb to infection, or if I’m rendered unconscious before I can finish administering to the wound. The entry site is small, out of my ability to reach, but you can close it shut after I’ve irrigated the wound and checked the bullet’s passage. The exit wound is messier. I can sew that myself.” Will looks at him, dark-eyed. Hannibal tilts his head and licks his bottom lip. He’s parched. The lighting in the clinic seems haloed, overly bright; distantly he knows he’s dehydrated, concussed, that he might be suffering hypothermia and acute blood loss. Will disabled the alarm to the clinic when they broke in – criminal childhood, he had muttered – but they can’t stay here overly long. Certainly not before dawn breaks.

“I need to ensure no organs were perforated.” Hannibal cleans his hands in alcohol, under the nails, between the webbing, over each finger individually.

“Christ.”

"Pack supplies,” Hannibal instructs. “Wound dressings, antibiotics, mild opiates, sterile needles and surgical thread, sewing up my back may need to be done later.” Hannibal pauses, then adds: “Include suppressants for myself…pheromone blockers if you need them.”

Will’s already at the shelves. Instead of being choosy he does a general sweep, grabbing everything in the cupboards and tipping it into a canvas bag. He rummages through the under-drawers as Hannibal prods at his wound.

“Is that a likelihood?”

There’s a bead of sweat running down his jaw. The hitch in his voice isn’t something Hannibal would normally allow another person to hear – the admission of pain - but he’s arrested by the way Will tenses, how he looks up at the sound as if an inviolate truth has proven itself false.

“Unknown. I was on a number of antipsychotics under Alana’s care, and pharmaceuticals are notorious for disrupting a cycle. Either way, I’d prefer not to go into heat while recovering from a bullet wound.”

“Hannibal – “ Will says, uncertainly.

When Hannibal goes to work there’s a local anaesthetic running through his system, but beneath that there is something else pushing at him too, into him, through him, a sense of growing warmth. He knows the direction of it. Hannibal can see the source from across the room. He could find it over continents. It curls around him like an animal skin, a promise of unity. The last fission of tension leaves his bones.

Silently, Hannibal closes the exit wound.

He can feel Will at his side, back, keeping Hannibal upright when his vision doubles, the small detonations where they touch, a fingertip over a scarred bite mark, a puff of breath against his neck. He’s glassy eyed, shaking with exhaustion when he orders. “Put more packing on my spine. We’ll deal with the rest later.” He twists slightly and his torso erupts like an inferno. He leaves thumb-sized bruises on Will’s forearms, gasping, until Will says  _Hey,_  and  _Don’t,_  and  _Hannibal, ssh_ , until that same  _push_  flows over him in a torrent and his body unlocks.

His patience is used up. He wants with all the immediacy of a child.  “Let me see.” Hannibal touches Will’s cheek reverently, a stained glass window of mutilated flesh, and says devoutly. “Let me look at you.”

 

***

 

 

It’s Will who keeps them alive for the next three weeks.

Hannibal suffers through dream states, fevered as infection sets in. Some veiled reality where Will shows the same innocent trust he demonstrated when they first met, where time has successfully reversed – except Hannibal is  _known_  in this reality – and in knowing he is accepted.  He is prone to waking up from these moments with his hands reaching; panicked by loss, some low noise clawing out of his throat.  “Don’t leave. I couldn't bear it if you left.”

Will reassures with a hand looped around his wrist, thumb pressing hard against Mathew’s scar.  _Hey now, go back to sleep._

 

***

 

 

“I am sorry.”

“And here I thought you weren’t.”

“Not about the fall.” Will shrugs, his eyes agate. “I couldn’t kill you. I couldn’t be left behind  _without_  you. But I had to try something…to find a way to finish it.”

“And have you finished it?”

“I think I’m done trying.” Will bites his thumbnail, he raises his head to make eye contact when he says, “But I  _am_  sorry about the bite. I know it’s not something you wanted.”

“I avoided it ardently for years.” Hannibal tilts his head to avoid the sun in his eyes and regards him lazily. “I spent most of my time in Florence in a state of confusion, trying to discern why you did it.”

“You had a knife in my gut, in truth, it was the only way to stop from screaming.”

Hannibal’s mouth twitches. The humour is a flash, there and gone again.   “I see. Better than a leather strap then.”

The garden is awash with morning sun before it dips into the afternoon shade. Wisteria crawls along the fence-line, it falls in a sheet of purple flowers, the scent redolent in the air. There is a pool out back that Hannibal won’t use until fully recovered, he prefers to spend his morning in the garden, skin turning from prison white to a healthier brown. The lawn is small, neatly cut, and the only sounds are the noises of the birds, the insects, the low hum of bees.  “A confession for a confession then. I would have bonded with my sister, if she were alive. Don’t fall victim to modern sensibilities, Will. Mass media inflates romantic trysts over any other type of connection. At its heart, a bond between alpha and omega is nothing but a  _tactical_  advantage. It’s a remnant of our tribal, and warlike, beginnings.”

Will remembers all of those drawings about shield-brothers. “You would have been her bodyguard?”

“If she were an alpha I would have defended Mischa, her offspring, and her chosen mate, to the very end.”

His family were old, feudal, and in the past it was tradition for male omega’s to serve as such. He would have known if something were wrong, no words needed with a familial bond. Mischa died before she fully presented; her gender forever a mystery, but Hannibal likes to imagine he would have been her knight regardless of gender – or maybe her dragon – eating the suitors at the gate.

“When she perished, so did any inclination to bond.”

Will looks uncomfortable as he considers. “Heat?”

Hannibal’s lips part, his eyeteeth show. “Chambermaids were not uncommon; or in modern times any other willing body for that matter.” He says archly, “It wasn’t Game of Thrones, Will, being bonded to a sibling didn’t mean incest. Don’t mistake love for sex.”

Inexplicably, Will flinches. “Right.” The bees hum. Subliminally, Hannibal hums too, pleased with the colour high on Will’s cheeks.

The stench isn’t so pungent today – whatever blocker Will is using it’s no longer the cursed ship in the bottle. Hannibal was half convinced Will only used the brand to inflame his hyperosmia - a middle finger gesture of rebellion - because sometimes passive-aggressive actions spoke louder than words.  

“You stopped the suppressants.”

“I’m fully healed.” Hannibal relaxes against the lawn chair and digs his shoulder blades into the plastic. One hand is placed against the red starburst on his side, better every day.

Will seems confused. “What if…”

“I can drive into town if I require company. Like my term inside the BSHCI, you are under no obligation to help.”

There’s a vibration between their connection, some off-key chord of tension.  

Three years, nine heats, a written request and a rejection for each and every one - like Hannibal, Will was leery of bonding – it wasn’t for him, not in his cards, but he used it against Hannibal like a trap. Relaxed, Hannibal stretches his toes out, points his feet to the garden’s far edge. His eyes close against the brightness of the day. He wonders about his sunglasses, the location of his book, what he should make for dinner this evening. He has no urgency, no need for murder. Not yet, soon maybe. At the moment he is content to live in the wondrous present.

Beside him Will breathes out slowly, an unhappy exhalation. “Okay,” he says. “That’s good then.”

The first time Will touched him – not from drugs, violence, self-preservation, or the numerable occasions Hannibal had pulled him close by force – they had stood on an eroding cliff together.

His touches now have turned unselfconscious, surer of their welcome. Hannibal notes each fleeting contact, skin to skin, fingertips to wrist, a hand landing low on Hannibal’s spine, how Will checks the bandages with a practiced eye. There are no barriers between them. He comes to Hannibal, stands beside him, with no sign of resentment. He could stay here. Hannibal could remain in this place forever.

Will’s eyes drift to the scar on his throat. His attention stays there with increasing regularity.

Hannibal takes to wearing polo shirts, v-necked t-shirts; he lounges by the pool with his shirt off, chest hair matted with sweat, swim trunks situated low on his hips. He takes to doing laps in the morning, churning the water as his shoulders and legs power him onward. He dries off nude, as comfortable as an animal in his skin.

Buoyant, the fishing line between them has grown shorter and shorter.

“You never stop playing,” Will protests, when he pushes them both up against the garden wall, when he kisses Hannibal with lingering softness. Hannibal is naked. Will is not but he dampens Will’s clothes with water shed from the pool as they stand together.

Will explores the side of his throat with quick flicks of his tongue. He worries Hannibal’s lower lip until the blood flows, until the kiss is iron-tinged and Hannibal is groaning with want. He’s hot, burning up, and only Will’s weight keeps him tethered to solid ground. "Can I?" Will murmurs against his mouth. "May I please?"

It’s the fishhook at the end of the reel. Hannibal bargains with a barbed sharpness.  “Will you do something for me?”

Will grows watchful, his hips still bump against Hannibal’s: once, twice, before they still.

“Nothing bloody. Nothing illegal,” Hannibal reassures.

“What?” Will asks suspiciously. Hannibal applies every trick he knows, sucks on Will’s tongue, presses a nail against a peaked nipple, seals their mouths together and rubs his thigh over Will’s cock until he amends, dazed: “Yeah. Anything. Anything you want.”

 _Come to town with me,_  Hannibal says.

 _Don’t wear the cologne,_  Hannibal suggests.

Hannibal smiles, _I have something else in mind for you to wear._

 

 

 

 

 

Something else is a chastity device. It’s hard, small, and made of exact measurements and dimensions.   It’s a plexiglass prison with ventilation holes, Will thinks sourly.

It’s Hannibal on the other side, no sensation -  _no touch -_  and Will thinks, choking on a moan,  _you’re a sadist, oh god I bonded with a sadist._

It’s a lock to prevent removal and it’s an attached ball-breaker, an iron cuff around his testicles, to drag them down and away.  It’s walking through town without any sort of hormonal blocker, with the denim of his jeans tented forward by the hard outline of it. It’s wearing Hannibal’s tailored shirt (longer in the frame), pulled low, to hide the shape of his cock-cage. It’s pure  _torture_  and he can’t discern why he said yes, only Hannibal  _asked_  and Will had wanted to please him.

His head swims the first time he passes an omega on the faint horizon of heat. A woman, a complete stranger, and he remembers with vicious anger why he  _hates_  rut.

He has a safety line, a half-finished bond, but it’s not complete – like a familial, he’s not coded to any one person - and it leaves him susceptible to other pheromones. “Hannibal,” he says, panicked. He stops on the corner. Will swivels his body away from the girl but the air is still. Quiet.  There is no upwind, not so much as a draft.  The chastity device cuts into his groin. Blood pounds through his body, a biochemical reaction to her scent, and Will near doubles over.  His cock tries to swell inside its plastic prison.

Mesmerized, Hannibal caresses the side of his face.

Will puts his mouth against Hannibal’s wrist and breathes in, a deep lungful until his head clears of the foreign scent. Hannibal smells like himself – not in heat - but the crisp cleanness of snow. He smells fresh. Will breathes in, breathes out, then nips at his wrist.

Hannibal turns his head to stare after the girl, his stance predatory.

“No,” Will says, alarmed. “It was your idea!   Goddamn it, Hannibal! I can get blockers at the nearest chemist!  Something without a ship, I swear!”

Hannibal's attention returns to him.  “I prefer this method of control.”

 _I don't,_  Will nearly snaps.  He sweats, pants: he stares at other man: “For how long?”

“There are ventilation points, a urinary hole, in theory you could wear the chastity device for weeks.”

“You won’t ask me for that,” Will says, desperately.

“No, I won’t,” Hannibal agrees. “But I  _want_  you to wear it.  It would please me very much.”

Will’s shivering, there’s sweat on his face, dampening his hair.  He can't remember the last time Hannibal asked something from him -  _come away with me, we could leave tonight. Feed the dogs, leave a note, it would be almost polite_  - maybe, maybe on the night before everything went to hell. His throat clicks as he swallows dryly.

“How far is the restaurant?”

In the next few days he gets used to Hannibal’s scent, in a crowd he’ll actively hunt it out, block everyone else from his subconscious until Hannibal's wintry notes are all that he breathes, all that he seeks.  Will doesn't think about sex. He can’t afford to. He returns to an old and familiar state of neutrality, not dissimilar to his days in Wolf Trap.  Thankfully, he stays small inside his plastic cage.  He gets accustomed to the hard edges of it; of how to walk without looking bowlegged.  On the plus side, without blockers cuisine and wine take on fuller notes and flavours. The meals Hannibal prepares at night are taken to a whole new level. Prior to that Will had an artistic appreciation for the presentation of the food, if not the taste, but now the scents can make his mouth water.  

It’s not until the third day when Hannibal’s scent actively changes. It creeps into the room like a marauder, it clogs Will's throat, fills his skull until he can’t think properly. “Oh,” he says, stupidly, staring down at his scrambled eggs. “Oh, god, _don’t._ ”  He can feel Hannibal’s smile. He can sense his wicked delight.  He observes Will quietly, head tilted as if waiting for a further reaction, a greater objection.  Will palms his crotch to relieve the sudden ache, the confinement too much. “You’re a bastard, you planned this."

“My lineage is unquestioned.” Hannibal takes Will by the hand and leads him upstairs. “May I?” he asks, smiling. “I’d prefer to consummate our bond.  Otherwise I fear for the welfare of any stray omega who might turn your head.”

"I can't," Will protests, meaning the fucking cage.  "I won't," he says, meaning he's caught Hannibal's scent now.  His head is full of pheromones.

“Dear boy.” He lays Will flat, he sits astride his body. Hannibal’s slick between the legs, ass running wet with it. He holds the plastic cage by the base of Will’s dick and explains judiciously. “It’s not possible to break a penis, however it  _is_  possible to sprain it through athletic sex.”   He presses his thumb hard against the muscle of Will’s lower abdomen, just above where the cage ends, until the tension gives.  

Carefully, Hannibal manipulates his dick, until it stands upright.  With one hand firmly around the base of the cage, Hannibal sits down, until the plastic disappears entirely, swallowed up by his body. He moves experimentally: up, down, rolling his hips in a tight circle. He rides the girth like it’s his personal dildo.

Will, cut off from sensation, separated by the thin veneer of plastic, sobs once. “Take it - ” His hips jerk in the beginnings of a helpless rut. “I want you to take it off.”

There’s a careful choice of words there, Hannibal notes, his dear and precious boy. Pleased with the sentiment, he relaxes. Hannibal rides Will thoroughly, thighs working against the strain, and answers curtly. “No.”  There are nine letters he has memorised, spread over three years.

Will doesn’t protest.  

In truth the cage isn’t deep or wide enough to be entirely satisfying. It feels closer to an anal plug than a dildo. There’s no chance of a knot inflating Hannibal’s hole, of his prostrate being rammed full with cock, no chance of a quick and dirty orgasm, but Hannibal can work toward his own pleasure and sometimes the exertion of it is more rewarding.  He pins Will down bodily. He arches his back and grinds his hips - artless and slow – he has all week to work through his heat. Beneath him, Will is a mess. People can argue semantics between genders all they want but the truth is omegas have multiple orgasms and alphas don’t.   Will isn’t going to knot him and fall asleep in the first fifteen minutes. Not until Hannibal is entirely satisfied.

He reaches behind him, between Will’s thighs, and strokes the exposed balls. They’re painfully tight inside their metal cuff; they dangle at the very end of their long stem.

Will cries out. He bucks under Hannibal like a wild thing. His curls are wet with sweat and effort, chest heaving. His hips piston, stymied, unable to meet completion. Will is beautiful in his torment and Hannibal leans down to murmur soft praise against his lips. He has to drape himself over Will’s chest, kiss him languid and slow, until the tide of urgency recedes and he can renew his pace again. Hannibal’s muscles are trembling by the time he comes, cock spurting, painting the other man in white stripes across his chest and belly. Under him Will’s hips don’t cease, his body is twitching like a junky. Overrun by pheromones and trapped by it.  

In the last three hours he’s gone from cursing to crying to a kind of drugged acceptance, his world diminished into a narrower and narrower field. Hannibal, he murmurs, soundlessly.  Hannibal, please.

Hannibal touches the side of his ribs, rolls his nipples between thumb and forefinger and hushes him. “Stay with me, Will.” And then more cautiously: “Can you stay with me a little longer?”

His eyes are blurred. Will looks so much like he did in Hannibal’s office, under Hannibal's psychiatric care. He stutters, as if Hannibal hadn’t heard the initial request, hours ago. “I want you to take it off.”

“I know,” Hannibal admits. Carefully, he pulls his body upright. The cock cage slip out of his ass. The device falls heavily between Will’s legs.

The cage is slick with Hannibal’s internal fluids, the plastic mould body hot. Hannibal strokes the length of it, jerking it cheekily.  His eyes are alight, fixed on the dusky skin on the other side, purple and swelled to maximum capacity. All of it confined, locked away, unfeeling. “Can you keep it on for me, Will?” And then earnest, like Will was earnest inside that cell when he pleaded with Hannibal, he asks: _“Please?”_

Under him, Will shudders.

 

 

 

 

By the end of day one Will knows the salty fluid of Hannibal’s come. He’s intimate with the thick glide of Hannibal’s cock stoppering Will’s throat, forcing his mouth open. He knows the sure grip of Hannibal’s fingers tracing his face. He loses count of how often, frequently, Hannibal comes. Seven times, he thinks, or was it closer to nine? Only that the air is thick with the drive to please, to see him satiated, and the agony between his legs doesn’t end. “Focus on me,” Hannibal coos. “When it hurts too much; feel what I feel. You can straddle the divide between you and I. I know you can.”

He can - in some blighted ways Hannibal is the most peaceful man Will knows - but there’s an endless hunger in him for Will. He looks at Will as he if wants to devour him, and helplessly, Will  _reflects_. He wants and he can’t get.

It hurts.   Will knows, too, that it might change. He could alter his prayer and say, “ _Take_ it off,” instead of “I want _you_ to take it off,” and in that singular word Hannibal would concede to his wishes.  He doesn’t. Will bites his lip to stop himself from demanding. He situates himself between Hannibal’s legs and suckles at him until the man is incoherent, speaking foreign tongues. He stumbles downstairs in the middle of the night to drink water straight from the faucet, dunking his head under the stream like a dog, and when he looks out the window he thinks, distantly, I could run. Open the patio doors, stumble outside; he could take a step toward the forest and follow that step with another, and another, until his head finally snaps clear, until the pain between his legs fades, the pheromones messing with his biology a distant memory. He doesn’t.

Silently Will scrubs a hand through his curls and pads upstairs.

Hannibal smiles at him, he says lightly:  _Is this what you imagined, alpha mine?_

Hannibal has three fingers buried in Will’s ass, slicked and wet from his own juices. Will had protested, garbled and panicked - it’s not what’s done, Will’s too dry, his passage too small - he’d squirmed on the rubbing and gone breathless at Hannibal’s tongue on his rim. Now there’s a fourth digit pushing for extra room, squirming inside. His hips are high, shoulders canted to the mattress, and when he looks down his body all he can see is the chastity device, the hard plastic forcing his prick into submission. When Hannibal pushes his cock inside, Will goes rigid with shock, body locked, and the whine in the back of his throat sounds like surrender.

The extra weight collapses his arms, drops him to his belly on the mattress. The sudden bark of pain in his groin is immediate. Behind him, inside him, Hannibal is nothing but gentle. He exists on the divide of that dichotomy, he inhales, exhales with every push and pull. He thinks his cheeks are wet - that he’s crying - but he stopped protesting long ago. Hannibal kisses the nape of his neck, brushes the hair out of his eyes, he hits Will’s prostate with each exacting thrust, until the cage oozes a clear white fluid, dribbling from the tip of his cock and through the ventilation holes. It’s not thick enough to be semen, it doesn’t feel like coming at all.

“You’re mine,” Hannibal says, and squeezes him tighter, tighter, like the coils of a snake until Hannibal comes one last, and ninth time.

Later, he doesn’t take the cock-cage off immediately.  Hannibal smothers Will into the blankets and pillows, keeps him contained by his own weight. Will is still shaking, his hips snap forward spasmodically.   The connection between them runs like a freeway, loud and noisy, they’re coded (consummated) but not by any traditional means Will is aware of. He’s conscious of Hannibal voice, pitched low and soothing: “I’ve drawn a bath. It’s cold I’m afraid, but I need you small as possible before I remove the plastic sheathe.”

Will jolts from a distant haze into semi awareness at the first touch of icy water to his groin.  It floods through the ventilation holes. The hard plastic is eased off his flesh in slow increments, his balls released from confinement, and that too is an agony. Will seizes in the bathtub, caught in a maelstrom of delayed sensation. “Sssh,” Hannibal soothes, and pulls him close. There are indentations on his cock, angry and red lines. The skin looks purple, almost bruised around the base of his scrotum. The return of full sensation, coupled with immediate swelling, with a rut that’s never finished, is too much. Will topples into Hannibal’s psyche full tilt – he let’s Hannibal’s joy, his quiet pride shine through him – because everything else is hellfire. It’s self-immolation to remain in his own skull. Hannibal cups Will’s cock as if to protect it, over the loose skin where a knot would swell.

“May I?” Will pleads, brokenly. He wants inside, _further_  inside; he wants the rut to ease. Make you mine, be mine for eternity, but he doesn’t know who’s head he’s in.

Hannibal eyes gleam. He says,  _I don’t like the smell of your omega blockers._

He says, eyeing the cock cage, floating at the far end of the bathtub, _I might want to use that contraption again some day._

He says,  _Nine heats over three years. I would have said yes at Muskrat farm._

 


	2. Chapter 2

This fic is inspired by the following picture which I stared at way too long  <http://thelongcon23.tumblr.com/image/156699016691>

and which I highly recommend other people stare at too - nothing but smut here.

 

 

 

 

Hannibal is dressed in a Henley and nothing else, by the look of it, it was the first item of clothing he fished from the floor. It’s too small across the shoulders.  The hem barely covers his groin. Will wore it in the garden a day or two ago and tossed it aside with a thought for the hamper, to tomorrow’s laundry, before Hannibal absconded with it. His feet and legs are bare as he perches on the kitchen stool.  Without greeting Will, he unfolds the morning news with a rustle of paper and examines the headlines.

Startled, Will sips his coffee and studies him.

Hannibal’s hair is a soft sweep across his forehead, stubble clear on his cheeks and jaw-line. His limbs are long, surprisingly slim. Will follows the strong line of his thighs to the curvature of his ass, hinted at but not seen. Post-heat, Hannibal’s posture is uncharacteristically soft – there’s something of the adolescent in his folded limbs – and with a pang, Will realises he can see the shades of Abigail, the time they must have spent together.

Hannibal smells like sex, he smells like Will.

Wordlessly, Will slides over a plate of scrambled eggs, crisped bacon, and sour dough bread. He takes care of the morning fare, mostly when Hannibal is swimming laps, and lets the other man prepare lunch and dinner. The grass outside is short and summer sweet. The tree-line on the property is kept at a distance, a concession to bushfires that sweep through the region from lightning storms. The morning already has a stilled heaviness to it; drained by endless days where the temperature trips into the high thirties.

“Jack Crawford has officially retired as head of the Behavioural Analysis Unit,” Hannibal reads aloud. “A polite euphemism for ‘you’re fired’, I believe.”

“The FBI is not forgiving and I wouldn’t relax if I were you; Jack won’t retire, he’ll change departments, take a pay decrease.  He’ll keep looking.”

“He was forgiven all manner of sins when he caught me, the accolades they heaped upon his name. I had a collection of clippings devoted to his smiling face – you’re name wasn’t mentioned, or if it were, only in the peripheral.”

“That’s because _I_ didn’t catch you.”  Will was packing up his belongings, putting his house on the market, keeping a low profile.

“Neither did uncle Jack but that didn’t stop him from playing it to his advantage.”

After the Baltimore massacre Jack was placed on bereavement leave pending review – but he followed Will to Florence with the understanding his career was in tatters – that he’d be booted all the way down to the armoury count if something didn’t emerge from his trip. Post Muskrat massacre, Jack Crawford was reinstated to his previous position with full honours and a promise to bump the BAU's annual budget.  He featured in every heavy-weight newspaper, tabloid, and on Time magazine for weeks after Hannibal's capture, dour profile photos of their relentless leader with his arms crossed, with Bella's photograph in the background.

“Did you take delight in destroying his career so thoroughly?"  Hannibal taps the paper with one forefinger and pulls the plate closer.  "I hope so. I would have. All those arrests he made under your labour.”

“Leaders tend to delegate, that’s the definition of leading.”

“He pulled you out of a classroom as if you were a personal discovery.” Hannibal looks up sharply, fork in hand, eyes full of scorn. “He thought he had rights to you. The FBI has qualified psychiatrists’ on their payroll, Will; the only reason he'd have to take you to an 'outsider' is because he knew what they would say – he didn’t want his new toy taken away.”

“And you gave him exactly what he wanted,” Will says, deadpan.

“I gave you _both_ what you wanted. Be honest, did it feel good, to lay his career to waste?”

“Yes,” Will bites out.

Hannibal smiles, charmed.   He leans over the counter, elbows braced on the marble countertop, and kisses Will on the cheek. “I missed your reluctant confessions. I took them for granted.”

He tastes like scrambled eggs and morning breath. It’s not off-putting. Will cups his cheek, deepens the kiss slowly until he can push his tongue inside, until he can lick the roof of Hannibal’s mouth. They pass slow minutes that way, unhurried, the urgency of the previous night gone. “I always told you the truth…in the beginning.”

“I know. You spread your ribcage wide; let me see the beating truth at the heart of you. You allowed yourself to be vulnerable and I wanted to be seen in return.” Hannibal nips his bottom lip, nuzzles against Will’s hand and kisses the centre of his palm, eyelashes closed. “Then you closed your ribcage, sutured your skin shut, cloaked yourself with animal fur and I couldn’t tell what was truth or what was lie. You used your empathy so ruthlessly, Will. You always knew exactly what to say to me. Was anything in Florence true?”

Yes. No.

The best lies are often bookended by half-truths.

They don’t lie to each other any more – or at least Will hasn’t lied since the fall, and Hannibal even longer, when Will made his request in the Baltimore office, all those years ago – but if there are sins between them they exist and grow in the silences of omission. “More than I’m comfortable with.”

Hannibal nods. He pushes the newspaper away, one hand covering Jack’s face, the headline smearing under his palm print. His eyes are averted, mouth parted, lips still shiny from Will’s kiss.  “Were you comfortable last night?”

Hannibal had been in control, Hannibal had been more composed than he thought an omega could be – as if by getting what his body craved – he’d been given licence to maintain higher thought. It was Will who unravelled - mentally and physically – denied by plastic, drugged on pheromones; his body had been a knot of anguish.  There’s a hazed quality to some of the events, of time running together, and he straightens his spine to regard the other man, mouth dry.

“That depends. Will you be cruel every time?”

“Heat is an outlet for our most basic instincts – pleasure, dominance, sadism, hedonism, all those drives are brought to the forefront as higher reasoning recedes - outside of it, I think I won’t be as - ”

“Vindictive?”

“Driven,” Hannibal corrects. His eyes glint as he returns to his previous position.   “I did let you out of your plastic prison, Will, if you recall, I did set you free.  Much as you did...in your own time.”

Incredulous, Will says, “That’s not remotely comparable.”

Hannibal shrugs one shoulder, the shirt hem riding with the uplift.  Will’s aware of Hannibal’s pose, the innate sensuality in it, how if he leaned forward over the counter he could see the shadows between Hannibal’s legs. He’s aware of how Hannibal smells, of waning heat, some combination that spells _them._ Did you miss me, Hannibal had asked in prison, as if the answer meant everything. Yes, Will thinks. It might have been one of the last lies he spoke.

He puts the coffee down. He walks around the kitchen counter, close, closer, until Hannibal lowers his legs. Will places both palms against Hannibal’s inner knees and pushes his thighs further apart. He sidles into the opened V and hitches the material of the Henley over Hannibal’s soft, pink, cock.   The wooden stool isn’t small.  Seated, Hannibal’s head barely fits under Will’s chin.  Hannibal nuzzles into Will’s torso, butting at his chest with his forehead, strands of hair catching on Will’s clothing.  Will hasn’t seen Hannibal as anything but human for a long time now, the elongated limbs, the ash-grey skin, the tined horns put away like the pages of a children’s story.

“I used to see you as a Wendigo,” Will muses quietly, and pushes Hannibal’s hair back, tucks it behind one ear.

Hannibal bites his pectoral. He compresses his jaw until the sting arches Will’s spine into a bow. Muffled through his mouthful, Hannibal asks. “Can you describe it?”

Will does, it’s easy enough; he lived with the image for years. Hannibal loosens his jaw, he takes his mouth away, and settles both hands on Will’s hips as he listens with rapt attention.

“Culture informs interpretation. The Wendigo is not common in my region of the world, the appearance you ascribe is more readily assigned to another.”

“Yeah?  And how do you see him?”

“Watchful, forgotten.  His skin tone was charcoal with eyes the colour of a hawk. He didn’t cannibalise bodies in front of you. He was an ancient and antlered god.”

Will thinks for a minute. “Herne the Hunter?”

“Who loosed the Call and let the Wild Hunt commence.” Hannibal stands; his shirttails fall with the movement, all the creases straightened. It doesn’t quite cover him, Will notes. He can see the very tip of Hannibal’s dick, his uncut foreskin peeking out.

They’re not cruel with each other this time, the frenzy of heat subsided. Will touches his shoulders, stomach; he skims the Henley over his body until Hannibal is bare-skinned. They kiss on the bed with their legs entangled, the heat of the day shining through the high window. He kisses between Hannibal’s legs, into the shadowed depth of him, until Hannibal’s sloppy, wet with spit. He stays there, tongue undulating - pushing in, pulling out - until Hannibal’s body trembles from his hairline to his toes, until his breathing is hitched and irregular. There’s no vindictiveness when Will rolls him onto his back - both of those long legs over his shoulders – when he finally pushes his dick inside. They rock together, quiet in their mutual worship. Will kisses the inside of Hannibal’s knee, he puts both hands under Hannibal’s buttocks and lifts him higher, slides his cock a fraction deeper. He can feel his knot forming and when it presses at the rim of Hannibal’s hole, batters for entry, Hannibal drops his legs from their elevated position and gasps. “Up.”  

Obligingly, Will gets both knees under him.

Hannibal curls a hand around Will’s sweaty nape and jack-knifes his upper body until he’s sitting in Will’s lap. Gravity does the rest. It drags them down until they’re flush together, interlocked.

Hannibal moans, clumsily, he kisses the side of Will’s mouth. His cock is trapped between both their bodies, a line of heat against Will’s stomach, leaking copiously from the tip.

Will swipes his thumb over the wet head, pushes his fingernail into the tiny slit, and presses down. Hannibal convulses, he flattens his chest against Will and clutches at his shoulders. His internal muscles clamp like a vice. Will hushes him, takes his fingernail out and jacks him one-handed, lazily, until they both come.

“Herne the Hunter?” he says, afterward, when they’re both sprawled across the sheets.

“There are iterations on the legend – not only in England but across Europe as well - he is the ghost of Windsor woods in one, a pagan god in another.  He is the spirit of the forest, of wildness, brutality, given form in dark flesh. In all, he is a hunter, a killer, and those who see him in the midst of the Hunt don’t survive unchanged.”

“No,” Will agrees. “I don’t suppose I did.”

Hannibal kisses his forehead and tightens one arm around Will's shoulders, pullling him close, trailing fingers down his spine.  "Jack," he states unequivocally, "is going to be a problem."

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So if you got to the end of this you're a living model of patience, or very willing to overlook horrible tenses and spelling errors. Sorry for the poor english folks, the story wasn't beta-proofed. Also I'm new to this fandom and a little shy, so thank you for reading it!


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